Gensu Dean - R.A.W. (CD)

Texas based analog producer GENSU DEAN started in Jackson, Mississippi producing on the now legendary Crooked Lettaz debut Grey Skies for his friend and Grammy Winner David Banner. Since that time he has gone on to produce for some of the best to ever do it including Ol Dirty Bastard (Wu-Tang Clan), CL Smooth, Homeboy Sandman, Sean Price, Roc Marciano, Large Professor, Planet Asia, Denmark Vessey, Guilty Simpson, and many more. The Mello Music Group producer started with the classic SP1200 and has added other analog equipment to his production techniques over the years, opening new chambers with each album. RAW is his newest foray into Hiphop and finds him pushing the sonic envelope while maintaining a vintage sound. The new album features friends and family Diamond D (DITC), Homeboy Sandman, Roc Marci, J-Live, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Red Pill, and more.

L'Orange & Mr. Lif - The Life & Death of Scenery (CD)

Debuting on Adult Swim, two of the most conceptual and unusual alternative artists in underground hiphop have joined forces to tell an absurdist story of culture, art and oppression, set in a lighthearted dystopian future. As adventurous as the concept sounds, the album is musically grounded in hiphop fundamentals and off the wall lyricism. Joining the duo are artists like DJ QBert, Gonjasufi and Akrobatik. Wyatt Cenac (Daily Show, Bojack Horseman) lends his voice as the narrator of our story.

Apollo Brown & Skyzoo - The Easy Truth (CD)

After releasing a project with his group, Ugly Heroes, earlier this year, Detroit producer Apollo Brown is back and has joined forces with one of New York's most talented rappers, Skyzoo. Their full length collaboration, "The Easy Truth," will be out September 30th. Today you'll be able to get their first single, "One In The Same," featuring the extremely talented Patty Crash.
"This joint is easily one of my favorite songs I've ever produced. Skyzoo and Patty Crash brought the music to life, then laid it to rest at the same time." -Apollo Brown
"It felt like everything I wanted to speak on in terms of the content of not just this particular song but the entire LP: my neighborhood, unbridled but misguided ambition, police brutality, gentrification, the dichotomy that exists in life, everything." -Skyzoo

Kool Keith - Feature Magnetic (CD + Download Card)

In a world full of cheesecake rappers, one man has assembled a phenomenal team to bring you madness. So stop stop what you're doing and get ready for a journey you've never taken before. Enter the sinister doctor, the Ultramagnetic visionary, Kool Keith, whose Feature Magnetic is his latest bizarre transformative odyssey. The album was primarily produced by Number One Producer (another one of Keith's aliases).
The new track "World Wide Lamper" featuring rappers, Bars Murre and Dirty Nasty, premiered today at XXL, where Keith explains, "Album is a full ahead of time extravaganza. If you play it backwards you may hear some wild shit."
As always, Keith seems unstuck in time, oblivious to geography, brilliantly mixed unflinchingly grim details with surreal, fantastical tangents. He’s from the Bronx, but belongs to far-reaching astral dimensions. And Where many of his contemporaries have become legacy acts or revivalists, Keith continues to originate and perfect his wild style. He’s parked behind Oracle Arena in Oakland with Norah Jones -- riding a horse and carriage through Central Park (bystanders shout that he looks like Mike Tyson). He drinks with MF DOOM in dusty London basement and recruits a legendary squadron of fellow travelers including Sadat X (Brand Nubian), Bumpy Knuckles, Boston pioneer Ed O.G., Slug from Atmosphere, and Vallejo legend Mac Mall.
Throughout, Keith weaves in and out of our reality, stopping only long enough to dap his friends and pass the mic. The songs are straightforward: spare, innovative beats, simple hooks, and razor-sharp verses from an unlikely collection of geniuses. Keith switches moods, cadences, and points of view effortlessly. On “Tired” he’s world-weary and unappreciated; on “Bragging Rights,” the mink coat melts off his shoulders like butter. “Peer Pressure” cryptically considers his career and the shifting racial demographics of his audience, a far cry from the scene in “Stratocaster” when he pulls up in the teal Maybach, handing out off-the-book jobs to the people.
In an era of careful branding and secret signings, it’s a radical act to put out a rap record where no MC can hide. The no-frills approach is a high-wire act, the kind of format that weeds out the fakes and the imitators. Predictably, however, "Feature Magnetic" is full of world-class acrobats. On the closing track “Writers,” Ras Kass sums it up best: “H-O-R-S, me and Kool Keith playing HORSE with a verse/ ...all you hear is swish.”
All Tracks Produced by Number One Producer except tracks 08 (Ocean Ave Records), 09 (Ol Man 80zz & Futurewave), 12 (Giz for Crazy 100)

Red Pill - Instinctive Drowning (CD + Download Card)

"The cover photo is a picture of my great grandmother, Mabel. She, like my own mother, died young after years of struggling with her demons. This album is dedicated to my mother, Jody, and my great grandmother." - Red Pill
Consider yourself lucky if you can’t empathize with Red Pill. No one channels bleakness better than the blue-collar Michigan MC, whose sophomore solo LP for Mello Music Group, "Instinctive Drowning" plays out like the ghost of Bukowski on a snarling bender. His songs are lifelines for the doomed, death letters written for fatigued skeptics, the anthems of an existence precariously balanced among a fifth of gin and a loaded .38 revolver aimed at the temple.
The album title doesn’t come from some glib “sad boy” gimmick—it’s an allusion to his unstinting depression and chronic alcoholism. The saddest stories are usually the most honest and almost no one is more honest than Red Pill. His music is his own atheist confession booth. "Instinctive Drowning" unravels as a litany of fear and loathing: rooted in the worry that his afflictions are genetic. Many others in his close family have suffered their own battles as well. Pill’s own mother passed at 45 from alcohol-related issues. If he ends up next, the album might as well serve as his requiem.
There is “The New Normal,” which chronicles his bout with viral meningitis, a disease practically alien to those in their late 20s, save for those whose livers are already ravaged. After two weeks of vomiting and vows to quit drinking, Pill finally recovered and went to the liquor store. “Club Privilege” is a club song for people who would sooner kill themselves than go to the club. It doubles as examination of white privilege, where Pill acknowledges the absurdity of his self-pity, while starting brawls and screaming at bouncers.
There is “Fuck Your Ambition.” It is what it sounds like: a rejection of white-picket fence ideals that never really existed. It lampoons the Horatio Alger myths, the lies about self-sufficiency and the way Capitalism has created a slovenly class of consumers. It could come off as self-righteous, but Red Pill is never above the fray. He’s the condemned marching alongside us, suffering for our sins, chewing on stale pizza crust.
Virtuosic Ohio native, Ill Poetic, handled production. The co-owner of San Diego’s Beat Box Records ceaselessly trawled his own bins, sampling forgotten art-punk 45s to foreign psych-funk. From there, he enlisted his Ohio band and a a wide range of musicians and singers to add their seasoning. The music is equally comforting and unsettling, eerie and familiar, offering the ideal contrast with Pill’s lyrics—creating something with soulful depth but raw grit.
Of course, there is a paradox at the heart of this record. For an album that courts death so closely, it manages to be oddly life-affirming. Maybe Pill is an optimist after all. There is the still the slight hope that he can escape, the notion that by writing these songs he can somehow heal himself and help others. He still probably will drown, but for now, few can float this well.

Gensu Dean & Denmark Vessey - Whole Food (CD)

These days everything you consume has to be checked - a vibrant outside can hide a genetically modified Frankenstein interior. Finding that 100% organically grown with no artificial rhymes can be difficult. This album is for those looking for something less calculated. Powerful production runs the range from soulful, funk filled, and hard knocking to cool, laid back easy nodders. The rhymes are politically aware without taking themselves to serious - so from the occasional judo chop to the need for sexy, dirty slutty money - Denmark explores life from the perspective of a man who grew up on minimum wage and butter sandwiches. Lyrics don’t sugar coat anything -no matter how rough that truth might appear: “The fleek shall inherit the Earth and the meek shall be buried in dirt - ain’t nothing sweet.” Denmark delivers existential truths while still throwing in a “where the hoes at?” A street savvy album that explores Black love, brutality, capitalism’s grip on our daily thoughts, and the connection it all has to our ancestors. Gensu Dean has produced for David Banner, Large Professor, Roc Marciano, and more, while Denmark Vessey has had his praises sung by the likes of Earl Sweatshirt.
Musical roughage to get through shit, to help you get through shit.

Analog Brothers - Pimp To Eat (CD + Download Card)

If The Analog Brothers didn’t exist, the weirdest scientist couldn’t have invented them. Or perhaps they never existed. Maybe it’s possible this was all a demonic 31st century hallucination cooked up by Kool Keith and cyborg alien pimps peddling flesh and white fluff acid.
But how else to explain the ultra-rare, ultra-magnetic artifact left behind: Pimp to Eat. Originally dropping from the skies in 2000, it’s being re-released by Mello Music Group, and remains the timeless mind-fuck that it was when it first emerged. It’s a laser beamed synthesized hieroglyphic that could sound timeless in any century or sonic dimension.
There are a few clear things amidst the craziness. The centerpiece of the record is Pimp Rex (AKA Rex Roland), the legendary Angeleno hustler, who did production for Body Count and the chorus on Ice-T’s “I’m Your Pusher.” He enlists his longtime collaborator Ice Oscillator (Ice-T), Keith Korg (Kool Keith), Marc Moog (Marc Live), and Black Silver (Silver Synth). These are the five fly horsemen of the apocalypse, the Analog Brothers delivering digital blows, oscillating sub-tones, and urinating out of windows.
According to Ice-T, the original masters of Pimp To Eat were delayed when Kool Keith’s vocals were stolen during the melee that followed the Indiana Pacers–Los Angeles Lakers NBA championship basketball game June 19, 2000 in Los Angeles. Who knows if this is true? Maybe Reggie Miller was the culprit?
All we really know comes from the abstractions assaulting our eardrums. Rex Roland’s tribute to the old analog sound, eerie synthesizers and pimp-slapping 808 drum machines. Ice-T and Kool Keith trade bars like a rap Scully and Mulder. In the first minutes, the erstwhile Dr. Octagon shouts out George Gervin, swap meets and the Ultimate Warrior.
On “Analog Technics,” the man better known as Black Elvis throws feces at celebrities at the Billboard Awards, sporting Superman underoos, and driving a lime green Corvette. On “More Freaks,” Keith sniffs 8 grams of coke in Calvin Klein boxer shorts, watching Wide World of Sports. While Ice-T panders with Motorola Pagers, eating Grand Slams and asking you to meet him at the back of Denny’s.
This is how it goes across 16 tracks of interstellar pimping. Out of the attics of the insane comes one of the most overlooked rap classics of its era, full of bizarre boasts, ice-cold and meteor-hard beats, and the best bad examples. You couldn’t say no even if you wanted to.

Oddisee - AlWasta (CD)

Sudanese­-American hip­-hop artist Oddisee's new EP, “Al­Wasta,” takes its title from the Arabic colloquial term used to mean (to use colloquial English) “the plug.” The term “wasta” comes from the Arabic word “wasat,” meaning “middle” or “middleman,” and describes a member of the community who acts as a connector using their wealth of social currency. Understanding the value of social currency & how to use it (for better or worse) is what Amir Elkhalifa aka Oddisee focused on as the primary inspiration for his writings.

Oddisee - The Odd Tape (CD)

Release Date: 5/13/16

Oddisee is an everyman with extraordinary talent. Both a rapper chronicling the perils and joys of ordinary existence, and a virtuosic producer attuned to the vibrations of how life actually sounds. But don't mistake the Odd Tape for the noise of birds chirping, idle chatter, or car alarms; it's that internal soul-jazz reverberating at the back of your brain.
For the last decade, the Mello Music Group artist has alternated between instrumental albums, full-length rap records, and his role as one-third of Diamond District. The Odd Tape is technically the former-there are no vocals-but if you call this an instrumental album, you might as well say the same about Bitches Brew.
After a decade making music, the Prince Georges, Md.-raised and Brooklyn-based has transcended influences, comparisons and genre. The Odd Tape showcases the range of a composer bending hip-hop, soul, and jazz into singular form, tapping into that same emotional Fort Knox that animates all wordless choruses.
The Odd Tape revolves around the rhythms of the artist's daily life. It starts in the morning with "Alarmed," that sounds like if Shuggie Otis did a psychedelic eye-opening cover of Nas' "Shootouts." It rolls through "Right Side of the Bed," with its glitter-gold sax lines, loose drums, and sunshine-slanting-through-the-blinds keyboards. Oddisee went from sampling to creating the eternal sounds of his original inspirations. You can hear older gods like Roy Ayers, Bob James, and Fela, but mostly you hear Oddisee continue to come into his own.
As Pitchfork described his previous album, 2015's The Good Fight: "the music feels distinctly international and unhindered, far removed from the straight-ahead boom-bap he used to make. He's always created on his own terms, but [this] feels like a hearty "fuck you" to prevailing groupthink and the industry's creative limitations."
But this record marks another ascension. It glides, meditates, and simmers from "Alarmed" to "Still Sleeping." The soundtrack to his coffee in the morning, a trip to the corner store for fresh groceries, producing in the afternoon, cruising his bike through the city for inspiration, late afternoon song writing, stepping out into the evening with friends, hookah on the rooftop in Brooklyn, and settling into the dream world again. This is the Odd Tape, life as you've never heard it before.